This invention relates to electrical clamp connectors for insulated conductors. Such connectors often have opposite halves with mating grooves for the conductors, and bridging plates extending between the grooves and having insulation piercing teeth at the grooves to electrically connect two or more insulated conductors within the connector. In such known connectors, attempts are made to fully insulate the inside energized parts from the outside environment, but such connectors are also required to operate with various sizes and various relative sizes of conductors. Under certain such conductor conditions, the opposite connector halves need to rotate a number of degrees, i.e., ten to fifteen degrees, with respect to each other upon assembly, and this can cause interference fits or broken parts at the connector sides and also can cause the connector halves to partially or completely separate at one or both sides to expose the inner energized parts to the environment and to an operator. Such exposure obviously presents extreme danger to an operator's safety. Such prior art connectors for this reason also may not be used with higher voltage conductors because of short leakage paths to the outside and the risk of arcing. In short, such connectors are not fully insulated, are not easy to operate with various conductor sizes and relative sizes, and have maximum voltage limitations.
In addition, known connectors may not provide adequate insulation between the end of an enclosed conductor and the outside end of a connector in those instances where a conductor terminates within the connector (i.e., a splice or tap-off use of the connector). Even an insulating tab or cover at the connector end may, in certain applications, provide insufficient insulation and an insufficiently long leakage path to the outside environment from a conductor end abutting the tab. Such insulating end tabs or covers also may, unless of large dimension, partially expose a conductor end upon rotation of the connector halves to accommodate various sizes and relative sizes of conductors.
Still further, such prior art connectors either involve costly and time consuming methods of inserting and attaching the insulation piercing teeth to the connector halves, or else do not adequately attach such teeth so that upon disassembly of the connectors and removal of one or more conductors, the insulation piercing teeth also become removed from the connector halves with the conductors. The electrically conductive teeth are then exposed to direct operator contact and create a very serious risk of electrical shock or electrocution to the operator.
In addition, prior art connectors may function imperfectly with stranded conductors, in that the insulation piercing teeth only contact a very few rather than most of the inner conductive strands of the insulated conductors. As a result, the few contacted strands and teeth heat up excessively.
Furthermore, certain forms of prior art connectors do not provide a sufficient watertight seal where a conductor passes into or out of the connector.